Sunday, June 08, 2014

Back painting once more...

More Mexicans!

Things have been tremendously busy in the life of the Legatus and have not been helped by several IT issues meaning that I haven't had any spare time and if I have I haven't had access to a computer for long periods of time. All is now sorted and so I hope to catch up on various urgent tasks, not least of which is sending out my prize draw winners figures, as it is now a month since the draw. Apologies to the winners but getting to the post office has been impossible. Anyway, this weekend I managed an hour or so on my next unit of Mexicans and finished the nine other figures I have been working on, in a somewhat desultory manner, for the last few weeks.

I finished 17 figures in May which was my best month of the year. The longer evenings are certainly helping on the painting front. I don't know if more than 17 will be possible in June but maybe a dozen is more realistic. I didn't mange any in June last year but this June I have already managed five so far. These pirates have been sitting on the paint table for far too long but now they are done. I'll probably dig out a few more to keep building on them ready for the new Osprey On the Seven Seas Ruleswhich come out in August.

I haven't done anything for IHMN for a bit but here are two new figures. Firstly we have the North Star Moriarty (who will actually be Alberich von Tarnhelm in my companies). More on him in my earlier post here. I don't know where the monster figure came from, maybe he is a Foundry figure, but given the excellent news of the new IHMN Gothic supplement (online only at present) I knew I needed to get him painted.

Next up were another three Afghan tribesmen from Artizan Designs. Although irregular figures always take longer to paint, I am keeping a batch of these on the go and just painting the odd colour when I have time. I have another six under way at present. Very easy figures to paint.

Finally, I did a test figure for the Orinoco Miniatures Latin American Wars of Independence British Legion. This was also a nice easy subject so I will work on a few more.

£500 to move this two miles?

Lots of expenses this month what with the dreaded extension and things such as moving Charlotte from her halls of residence of the first year into her flat for the second year of university. To move two suitcases and seven cardboard boxes of stuff Pickfords wanted £420 with VAT on top. What a joke! Fortunately we found a local firm that charged the comparatively bargain price of £192. 10 boxes of Perry plastics saved!

The work on the extension is driving me mad, not least because the Old Bat keeps wanting my opinion on carpets, bathroom tiles, lights, curtains and all sorts of other nonsense. I also thought that after pneumatic drilling the garage floor away it would quieten down; but not so far. It's very hard to research the economic impact of direct flights to Bogota with a constant grating, high pitched whining in the background. But enough of the Old Bat, the brick sawing is nearly as bad. Also the builders have added significantly to our weekly shop by consuming huge boxes of tea bags (I always wondered who bought those 240 bag boxes), cans of Coke and biscuits. I can't say that I have seen Wagon Wheels since the seventies but the builders love them. And Club biscuits and Jaffa Cakes and Penguins and Hob Nobs and Kit Kats and chocolate caramel digestives. It all got really out of hand when the Old Bat bought them Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits at £1.80 for nine. Can't they eat custard creams and bourbons like everyone else? I'm going to do the next biscuit shop! Maybe I'll get them fig rolls, that will teach them!

The scariest children's TV show ever made

My mother used to get my sister and I these "figgy biscuits" when we were little, largely, I suspect, on the basis that we hated them so much that we couldn't bear to eat more than one at a time. I particularly remember being given them as a "treat" while watching Tales from Europe on television after school. This was a collection of children's TV series from Europe (obviously) which were either dubbed or just had English narration over the top. I particularly remember one featuring some boys and a motorbike filmed in Istanbul I think. Every time I go to Istanbul, now, I think of fig rolls.

The really memorable Tales from Europe series, of course, was the utterly terrifying The Singing Ringing Tree. Forget Dr Who, I never hid behind the sofa for that, but The Singing Ringing Tree gave me nightmares for decades. Originally an East German film made in 1957, you can buy it on DVD, if you really want to scare your children to death, although the DVD is in its originally filmed colour, which is somehow less scary than the expressionist black and white version the BBC showed in the sixties. Everyone is used to seeing people of "reduced stature" these days thanks to science fiction films and, indeed, the Paralympics, but in 1964 the scampering dwarf from Das singende, klingende Bäumchen (it sounds even scarier in German) frightened the life out of me.

Girders! We'll need biscuits after shifting these!

Anyway, stuff keeps arriving on large lorries at 6.00am in the morning, much to the neighbours' delight. Do I really want to spend £4,500 on steel girders? I do not but because of the sort of soil we have here we have had to have a complicated foundation put together with a sort of cage of girders underpinning tons of concrete. You could build a rocket launching pad on the foundations!

I do have a floor, somewhere

My room is total chaos at present and is not helped by the fact that I have bought a couple of those CD album cases to hold my DVD collection. I had filled all my shelves and had built up an overflow of three piles of DVD's which were over a three feet high and kept falling over. So all the boxes are going to the dump and I will put them in the sleeves. Except I don't have time to get on with it. I haven't even unwrapped the second case. I did start on my unwatched TV series and have already filled one 500 disc capacity case and have only reached the letter L. I've still got the rest of my unwatched TV series, unwatched films, watched films and watched TV series to go. In the meantime I can't find anything!

I don't need any more figures, of course, but was in Orc's Nest this week and saw the new Victrix Greek Unarmoured Hoplites and Archers so picked them up for no real reason whatsoever. I constructed a few and had forgotten quite how long these multi-part plastics take to assemble. I'm thinking about Greeks again because of the recent release by Foundry of the Steve Saleh sculpted Persians which have, after many years, seen the light of day for the first time. These would be perfect to pitch against Macedonians. Although I don't have any phalangites painted I do have 66 Greek skirmishers and 24 cavalry painted for the Cynoscephalae force I did for a Society of Ancients game in 2007.

My Foundry Greek heavy cavalry from 2007

I think Persians of this period are among the very worst wargames armies to paint. The troops usually rate low points in most rules so you need lots of them and they have extremely complex patterned uniforms. They are like Celts! Or samurai! Anyway, I found a couple of Spartan officers I had started some time ago, so hopefully they will give me the opportunity to do a post on my Spartan blog this month.

If figgy biscuits are anything like Fig Newtons, I quite like them. Of course, I also enjoy the black wine gums and Eat More, so don't mind me. Also, I imagine direct flights to Bogota rather quickly rationalizes the transport of powdered consumables, assuming you can negotiate customs.

Yes, they are indeed the same biscuit, Foisted upon us by the Americans since 1894. Bananas. That is one of Colombia's biggest exports to the UK! 70% of bananas sold in British supermarkets come from Colombia. You sound like my colleagues who are always making jokes about Colombia's main export (which is crude oil, by the way)!

Ahh the joys of home "improvement" projects. Feeding the crew seems a bit expensive but I'm sure that the free food has no incentive impact on that construction crew's ability to complete a job in an expeditious way.

Fig rolls were always referred to as 'Boo Hiss' rolls in our house as no one liked them, but we always seemed to have them in the cupboard! The Singing Ringing Tree used to terrify my sister (so of course I loved it!).. This is the Fast Show version.... http://youtu.be/7XqMF5ou7hE

Having been packed off to school at a ridiculously young age, you learnt all sorts of vital life skills, but one of the most important was never pass up a meal, however meagre! As a result, I've developed all sorts of questionable culinary habits including a love of fig rolls! Quite possibly the funniest thing that I've read this morning, I delight in the fact that I'm not the only one who measures household expenditure against wargames miniatures!